Raindance 2016: The Chocolate Case

Never has chocolate been so damn interesting.

I'm going to be brutally honest here: I initially highlighted The Chocolate Case as a must-see because I thought it would be about chocolate, which is a thing I love more than anyone ought to. And, well, it is about chocolate… and how it's made using child slave labour. Yeah, exactly. That didn't stop me from going, though—in fact, I was more intrigued than ever because The Chocolate Case told a story I had never heard before, and a damn intriguing one at that.

The Chocolate Case begins in 2003, when three Dutch journalists stumbled across the shocking fact that much of the world's chocolate is produced using child slave labour. This set them on a crazy journey to attempt to right such a terrible wrong. Crazy because it involved attempting to get one of the journalists sent to jail for "participating" in slavery (AKA eating chocolate), traveling to Africa to obtain personal accounts of the working conditions on the cocoa plantations, deciding to make a "slave free" chocolate bar as a publicity stunt (an "if we can do it, so can everyone else" deal) and eventually deciding to actually produce that slave free chocolate bar for realsies and give it the best name ever: Tony Chocolonely. Oh, also, they tried to get Roald Dahl's widow to help out too. Seriously: crazy story.

If you're wondering how director Benthe Forrer was able to tell such an impressive story, she actually didn't have to start from scratch. Those three Dutch journalists produced a television show and all of their saga was meticulously documented. Forrer sifted through hundreds of hours of footage and shot new footage to bring the story to light in a whole new way. The original bits of footage are paired with recent interviews as the journalists recount everything that happened to them. They're engaging and thoughtful; earnest and frustrated.

The story is infuriating in the fact that child slave labour is not only a thing that exists but that companies seem to have zero interest in fixing it. This documentary might be about chocolate but it's probably a fair representation for many industries. It also comes to light that the Fair Trade labels on some chocolates is mostly just that: a label, which makes you wonder about those fancy sorts of labels we see on tons of food now: organic, fair trade, cage free, and so on.

The Chocolate Case spans over ten years and ends a little bittersweet (ha, hahahaha). Child slave labour still exists in the chocolate industry but companies like Tony Chocolonely are working closely with plantations to ethically produce chocolate and continue to bring awareness to the issue. It's a must-see: an important story, beautifully edited and paced that will hopefully make you a little more wary of the kinds of chocolate you're eating. And, seriously, if these three dudes can create a little bit of change imagine what more people could do if they tried.

RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL runs from 21 September to 2 October 2016. Learn more about the festival here and read more of our festival coverage here.